| There was a frenetic air to trading in London’s listed miners this week — things were faster, wilder and even more uncontrolled to the downside than battered sector players have come to expect. No one mentions the concept of a commodities “supercycle” these days, not after four years of a downturn with no end in sight.
The themes of oversupply and faltering Chinese demand are well-worn, but the focus recently has moved to corporate debt levels and dividends. Or rather debt and the non-deliverable nature of those dividends. There is also the slightly unintuitive issue of rapidly falling production costs in the mining industry, noted by Investec’s sector specialist Marc Elliott this week as he and his research team again chopped their commodity price forecasts across the board...............................................Full Article: Source
|